A biological membrane is conceptualized as a system in which membrane proteins are naturally matched to the equilibrium thickness of the lipid bilayer. Cholesterol, in addition to lipid composition, has been suggested to be a major regulator of bilayer thickness in vivo because measurements in vitro have shown that cholesterol can increase the thickness of simple phospholipid͞cholesterol bilayers. Using solution x-ray scattering, we have directly measured the average bilayer thickness of exocytic pathway membranes, which contain increasing amounts of cholesterol. The bilayer thickness of membranes of the endoplasmic reticulum, the Golgi, and the basolateral and apical plasma membranes, purified from rat hepatocytes, were determined to be 37.5 ؎ 0.4 Å, 39.5 ؎ 0.4 Å, 35.6 ؎ 0.6 Å, and 42.5 ؎ 0.3 Å, respectively. After cholesterol depletion using cyclodextrins, Golgi and apical plasma membranes retained their respective bilayer thicknesses whereas the bilayer thickness of the endoplasmic reticulum and the basolateral plasma membrane decreased by 1.0 Å. Because cholesterol was shown to have a marginal effect on the thickness of these membranes, we measured whether membrane proteins could modulate thickness. Protein-depleted membranes demonstrated changes in thickness of up to 5 Å, suggesting that (i) membrane proteins rather than cholesterol modulate the average bilayer thickness of eukaryotic cell membranes, and (ii) proteins and lipids are not naturally hydrophobically matched in some biological membranes. A marked effect of membrane proteins on the thickness of Escherichia coli cytoplasmic membranes, which do not contain cholesterol, was also observed, emphasizing the generality of our findings.

ABSlRACI Baby hamster kidney (BHK) cells were infected with Semliki Forest virus (SFV) and, 2 h later, were treated for 4 h with 10/~M monensin. Each of the four to six flattened cisternae in the Golgi stack became swollen and separated from the others. Intracellular transport of the viral membrane proteins was almost completely inhibited, but their synthesis continued and they accumulated in the swollen Golgi cisternae before the monensin block. In consequence, these cisternae bound large numbers of viral nucteocapsids and were easily distinguished from other swollen cisternae such as those after the block. These intracellular capsid-binding membranes (ICBMs) were not stained by cytochemical markers for endoplasmic reticulum (ER) (glucose-6-phosphatase) or trans Golgi cisternae (thiamine pyrophosphatase, acid phosphatase) but were labeled by Ricinus communis agglutinin I (RCA) in thin, frozen sections. Since this lectin labels only Golgi cisternae in the middle and on the trans side of the stack (Griffiths, G., R. Brands, B. Burke, D. Louvard, and G. Warren, 1982, I. Cell Biol., 95:781-792), we conclude that ICBMs are derived from Golgi cisternae in the middle of the stack, which we term medial cisternae. The overall movement of viral membrane proteins appears to be from cis to trans Golgi cisternae (see reference above), so monensin would block movement from medial to the trans cisternae. It also blocked the trimming of the high-mannose oligosaccharides bound to the viral membrane proteins and their conversion to complex oligosaccharides. These functions presumably reside in trans Golgi cisternae. This is supported by data in the accompanying paper, in which we also show that fatty acids are covalently attached to the viral membrane proteins in the cis or medial cisternae. We suggest that the Golgi stack can be divided into three functionally distinct compartments, each comprising one or two cisternae. The viral membrane proteins, after leaving the ER, would all pass in sequence from the cis to the medial to the trans compartment.As viral membrane proteins are transported from their site of synthesis in the rough endoplasmic reticulum (ER) to the cell surface, they pass through the stacks of flattened cisternae that constitute the central feature of the Golgi complex (3, 5). The mechanism of transport and precise route taken through the Golgi stack are still unknown, but transport is accompanied by a precise sequence of structural changes in the transported protein and its attached oligosaccharides (10-12, 15, 18, 25, 31, 34). If these changes reflect the movement of proteins from one part of the stack to another, it would be important to determine precisely where these changes occur. We would then gain a

A (Mg2+ + Ca2+)ATPase (ATP phosphohydrolase, EC 3.6.1.3) has been purified from sarcoplasmic reticulum using a single step centrifugation procedure. Physical and biochemical studies of membrane structure are complicated by the multiplicity of components in native membranes. One solution is to reconstitute specific membrane functions using the minimum number of defined lipid and protein components. This would allow both the determination of the tolerated range of lipid composition and the insertion of specifically labeled components into the reconstituted structure to serve as physical probes. We selected the active Ca2+ transport system of sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) for reconstitution because the major protein in the membrane is the (Mg2+ + Ca2+)ATPase (ATP phosphohydrolase, EC 3.6.

Two models have been put forward to explain the growth of new Golgi during the cell cycle. The first suggests that a new Golgi grows out of the endoplasmic reticulum by de novo synthesis. The second suggests that a pre-existing Golgi is needed for the growth of a new one, that is, the Golgi is an autonomously replicating organelle. To resolve this issue, we have exploited the simplicity of the apicomplexan parasite Toxoplasma gondii, which has only a single Golgi stack. Here we show, by using video fluorescence microscopy and three-dimensional reconstructions of serial thin sections, that the Golgi grows by a process of lateral extension followed by medial fission. Further fission leads to the inheritance by each daughter of a pair of Golgi structures, which then coalesce to re-form a single Golgi. Our results indicate that new Golgi grow by autonomous duplication and raise the possibility that the Golgi is a paired structure that is analogous to centrioles.